El Morro National Monument in New Mexico

West of Albuquerque, a detour off of I-40 onto Highway 53, will take you to an impressive geological formation. El Morro is a cuesta, a long formation gently sloping upward, then dropping off abruptly at one end. The land is made up of sandstone layers deposited by wind, desert streams and an ancient sea.

We walked around the base of El Morro that you can see in this picture.

When we first saw El Morro from the highway, we weren't sure we would be able to get close to it, but you can get within a couple of feet of the rock face on the trail, walk around the base and climb up to the top.

Petroglyphs and carvings on the rock date from several hundred years ago until 1906 when Federal law prohibited further carving.


The Zuni Indians, whose Puebloan ancestors lived here called it Atsinna --place of writings on the rock. The Spanish called it El Morro --The Headland, and the Anglo-Americans called it Inscription Rock. Over the centuries those who traveled this trail stopped to camp at the shaded oasis beneath the cliffs.

Snow melt and rain run off to form this pond at the base of El Morro. Although the level of water drops during dry periods, it never dries up and is not fed from underground springs. Travelers on the ancient trade route relied on El Morro's source of water.

The air here was fragrant from the evergreen shrubs and trees.







The Puebloans, ingenious farmers of the high desert, were master builders. The Atsinna Pueblo dates from about 1275 and was home to between 1,000 and 1,500 people. This link takes you to a picture on another website that shows the top of El Morro.   View from on top of El Morro

Information from the brochure El Morro National Monument
HC61, Box 43, Ramah, NM 87321- 9603

Butterflies and cacti in Albuquerque

In Albuquerque there is a wonderful butterfly pavilion and garden. Here are some pictures.

                                                 
a prickly pear cactus with the fruits

This is a saguaro cactus, 

lots of them are found in southern Arizona.

Here are some of the butterflies we saw...

This butterfly pavilion also raises butterflies. 

Walking through this garden and butterfly habitat was magical! Don't miss it if you get to Albuquerque!

Food and fun in Albuquerque

                                                 When is a bus not a bus?

When it is a food truck of course This one sells--you guessed it--crepes! We are great food truck fans since our son Jonathan works on one, The Great Escape, in North Carolina. The Boiler Monkey sells savory and sweet crepes and can be found on Facebook and serving yummy food in Albuquerque.

Inside there is seating, it is a bus!

Two girls were cooking up delicious food!

I had to open up my savory crepe called The Andi  to show you what it was - quinoa, black beans, cheddar, tomato avocado and green chilies!

Entertainment this evening at the Marble Brewery, where The Boiler Monkey was serving, was provided by Bé Bé La La. 

Maryse on the left and Alicia on the right, were performing music they write. You can find them planing in the Albuquerque area. Find them on Facebook 

reverbnation.com/BéBéLaLa

We really enjoyed their music.

What a great day!

Aliens and bats!

Roswell, NM is an interesting place, the UFO museum has lots of documents from the 40's when the aliens supposedly landed.  They have aliens,

and ancient drawings that have been interpreted as evidence of past alien visits. This is a large wooden carving that has been studied and interpreted as evidence of past alien landings.

A close up shows the carving with more detail. This drawing has been described as an 'ancient astronaut'. 

After the aliens it was on to Carlsbad Caverns, south of Roswell. The caverns are incredible. It was about 57 degrees in the cave, 720 feet below the surface where it was about 98 degrees.

The highlight of the day was watching the bats come out of the cave. About 7:30 pm they began to emerge, flying out in swirls, rising in the sky and appeared to be organizing themselves into groups. They flew up into the sky and then swirled around, gradually disappearing. We couldn't photograph this, but try to imagine that it is dusk, the full moon is rising in the sky just above and to the right of this cave opening. The bats continued to emerge until 8:00, when it was too dark to see them leaving the cave. Even as the sky darkened, the bats could be seen in contrast to the blue sky flying in front of a pink tinged moon---spectacular!

All kinds of rock formations in New Mexico!

This is camel rock, just north of Santa Fe, NM. At first I didn't think that it looked like a camel, but when we stopped and looked at it from just the right angle, well -- it does look like a camel. Guess he is a one-humped camel!

Did you ever want to fly? Up to 10,000 feet and not in an airplane? Today I did, up the longest tram ride. Think of a James Bond movie, remember the one with Roger Moore and Jaws? Today I rode up to the top of a 10,000 foot mountain range, Sandia, in Albuquerque. As you leave the tram station, the tram heads straight up the mountain. There are three towers where the tram crosses peaks. Looking down takes your breath away!

Below is golf ball rock as you see it from the tram. It is several times larger than the tram car which holds about 20 people.

Great rock formations all the way up. The tram starts at about 6,000 feet and goes up to the visitor's center at 10.000 feet!

This rock formation was called the tootsie roll! It is also really tall, and far away from the tram, so it looks deceptively small! Wonder what is holding it up?

Really cool rock formations!

This one was called the cannon.

Up at the top is was about 30 degrees cooler than down in Albuquerque.

This was a lava flow just west of Roswell, NM.

What a great day, great rocks and flying through the sky in the tram!

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Love the changes in scenery and terrain, every few miles you see a different environment.

                                                 Mountains seem to rise out of the ground.

                                                Flat grasslands go on as far as the eye can see.

               The adobe architecture in Santa Fe blends into the environment from the distance.

In the Plaza in the center of Santa Fe there was a festival of Indian arts and crafts. 

One tent had a display of a weaving showing the different plants used for dyeing the wool. You can also see a large spindle for spinning the wool.

The central plaza in Santa Fe, on one side is the Palace of the Governors.

On one end of the square is the beautiful Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

The"miraculous staircase" to the chapel choir loft in the Loretto Chapel was built in 1878 using only wooden pegs. Originally it did not have a banister, the sisters who had to climb it to sing in the choir loft asked that they be added. The staircase has two 360 degree turns.

Some of the craftsmen were dressed in their tribal clothes.

At the oldest house in Santa Fe there was a spinning wheel, more than 100 years old. 

This was the kitchen in the old house, complete with cooking stove seen in the corner,

Santa Fe is a great city to visit, just be sure to wear comfortable walking shoes, 

in all we walked 7 miles!

Knitting in the Wild Wild West!

After all these years of airplane travel, I still marvel at the ability to hop on a plane, this time Frontier, soar into the sky and end up almost 2000 miles from where you started in just a few hours. While we were soaring above the clouds, I found myself wanting to identify them. We spent some time studying clouds year before last in my second grade class and this lesson produced some web pages devoted to this activity: (note, at some point the link below may disappear. Now that I am retired, I have no control over that)

This is one of my favorite Baby Blues cartoons.

http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/cloud3.html

I couldn't knit while flying, but took time to contemplate the shapes of the clouds. Some of them looked like the white wool roving I have at home waiting to be spun into yarn. Other clouds remind me of the color of my satin angora rabbit, gray with a promise of rain.

Now that we are on the ground I can return to the knitting. One project involves a sheep named Gorgeous, and he was, and some Tomato Red dye. Part of his fleece was very light and part was dark. I separated the two parts and dyed the light part with the Tomato Red dye, then blended the two parts to get a homogenous roving. Then it was time to spin the roving into yarn. The result is a kind of muted red/pewter shade. The project is a simple scarf with a checkerboard effect. This is easy to do and is something that I can do while riding in the car.